© Prestel Verlag, Munich · London · New York, 2014
© for the texts by Buzz Poole and Christopher D. Salyers, 2014
© for the photographs see Image Credits (page 239), 2014
Front cover: photos © J. K. Putnam except for Bigshot © Shree K. Nayar
Back cover: photo © J. K. Putnam
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006
TOY CAMERAS: MARKETING A MEDIUM BY BUZZ POOLE
012
IT’S NOT THE PHOTOGRAPHER, IT’S THE CAMERA BY CHRISTOPHER D. SALYERS
019 NOVELTY CAMERAS
097 DIANA, HOLGA & THE PLASTIC CAMERA BOOM
106
INTERVIEW WITH MR. T.M. LEE, CREATOR OF HOLGA
123 LOMOGRAPHY & THE ANALOG MOVEMENT
125
INTERVIEW WITH LOMOGRAPHY
171
INSTANT CAMERAS: THE RISE, FALL & RESURGENCE OF POLAROID
172
POLAROID: THE LOOK OF INSTANT GRATIFICATION
176
INTERVIEW WITH CREED O’HANLON, THE IMPOSSIBLE PROJECT´S CEO
189 JAPANESE CAMERA CULTURE
221 DIGITAL TOYS
222
INTERVIEW WITH SHREE K. NAYAR, INVENTOR OF BIGSHOT CAMERA
TOY CAMERAS: MARKETING A MEDIUM
TOY CAMERAS: MARKETING A MEDIUM AND
THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE UNEXPECTED
BUZZ POOLE
When Susan Sontag wrote that photography’s “main
effect is to convert the world into a department store or
museum-without-walls in which every subject is depreciated into an article of consumption, promoted into an
item for aesthetic appreciation,” she most certainly was
not thinking of toy cameras. But the sentiment aptly
applies to this photography industry niche and the deft
marketing strategies implemented to shift the perception
of photography from being an expensive professional’s
pursuit to an affordable, everyman’s activity.
Not only were the earliest cameras expensive, they were
large and the creation of an image required time and
knowledge. As cameras were refined and made smaller
and more efficient they were marketed to appeal to
hobbyists. No longer was photography defined by
long spells of sitting in portrait studios or the lugging
around of bulky cameras, fragile plates, and corrosive chemicals. Photography became an off-the-cuff
novelty, capturing candid family moments and scenes
of leisure.
The evolution of photography from being a rarefied
medium to something so commonplace we hardly even
think about it anymore has as much to do with savvy
marketing as visual aesthetics and artistic practice. From
the very early days of photography, camera manufacturers
tapped in to popular culture trends in order to promote,
and package, their cameras.
6
An indispensable resource for understanding the genesis of toy cameras is John Wade’s slim but detailed
Cameras in Disguise, which charts a clear trajectory from
“disguised cameras,” made as early as 1862, to the toy
cameras of today. As Wade sees it, in the United States,
as well as in Europe, the public was interested in everything about detectives, especially their covert ways.
Whether it was Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency
in the United States, which started in 1850, or the
publication of the first Sherlock Holmes story in 1887 in
the United Kingdom, both real and fictional detectives
were curiously popular.
In 1862, an English designer known only as Thompson,
working with A. Brios in Paris, received a French patent
for a Revolver Photographique. Compared to the cameras
made to look like pistols and rifles that would follow in its
wake, this first revolver camera really only looked like a
firearm in that it had a wooden handle similar to one that
would be found on a pistol, and the lens resembled the
barrel of a gun.
Up until this time, cameras used wet plates, which
required chemical preparations prior to an exposure
and then needed to be developed immediately after the
photograph was taken. As Wade points out, the advent
of dry-plate technology permitted photographers to
shoot an exposure and develop it at another time, giving
designers of disguised cameras much more flexibility.
TOY CAMERAS: MARKETING A MEDIUM
The Eastman Kodak Brownie Camera, Model No. 2.
An impressive array of disguised cameras was made
during the last two decades of the nineteenth century;
it is also worth noting how several of these cameras
incorporated technological developments that went well
beyond outward appearances. In 1882, Etienne Jules
Marey made a Gun Camera, not to be secretive about his
taking of pictures but to better aid him in his scientific
study of birds in flight. According to Wade, the camera
“housed a long focus lens in the barrel that acted as a
telescope to enlarge distant objects. A large circular dry
plate was housed in a special magazine and as the gun’s
trigger was pressed a mechanism revolved the magazine to expose twelve pictures in rapid succession.” The
following year, the Photo-Revolver de Poche, designed
by E. Enjalbert, used parts from a real revolver, looking
almost identical to a European gun from that era.
More and more patents followed and with them new ideas
for cameras that didn’t look like cameras. E. Enjalbert
also designed the Postpacket Camera, which looked liked
a wrapped parcel. As Wade writes, “Models were also
launched disguised as binoculars or opera glasses, with
one lens for the exposure, the other for the viewfinder.
Others appeared disguised as handbags, and there was
even one made to look like a picnic basket.” Cameras
were hidden behind vests and inside men’s hats; in 1890
Bloch’s Photo Cravate hit the market. Books became a
popular disguise for cameras, often housing the lens in
the spine.
Individual inventors and tinkerers developed many
of these cameras in disguise, and their proliferation
indicated a demand for cameras marketed to consumers
7
TOY CAMERAS: MARKETING A MEDIUM
who did not identify themselves as photographers.
George Eastman, already holding patents for crucial
elements of photographic processes, such as film
and film roll holders, recognized the potential for such
cameras. According to Eastman biographer Elizabeth
Brayer, a patent was issued in 1886 for the Eastman
Detective Camera, which was inspired by the 1883
release of the first commercially produced hand-held
box camera invented by William Schmid of Brooklyn,
New York. In June of 1887 fifty of Eastman’s detective
cameras, set at a retail price of $45 USD, were ready
to be released on a trial basis. For reasons not wholly
known, Eastman distributed only a handful of these trial
cameras, presumably retraining his focus on the
development of the first Kodak, and its release in 1888.
Of course, the first Kodak changed photography, and
in truth human culture, bringing the medium to the
people. The logo promised: “You press the button—we
do the rest.” It was an ingenious model in how it empowered people to be excited about taking pictures and as a
result of that excitement insured that the entire range of
Kodak photographic accessories—from cameras to film
and processing fees—would always be in demand.
In 1900, Kodak introduced the Brownie camera, the
launching pad for the toy cameras featured in Camera
Crazy. Using Palmer Cox’s illustrated “Brownies”—
beetle-like sprites that were already popular culture
fixtures—the Brownie was marketed explicitly for children.
As mainstays of American popular culture since 1883
these mischievous but moral characters borrowed from
Scottish folklore had already been on ample adventures
before teaming up with Eastman Kodak. Jeanne Solensky,
a librarian in the Joseph Downs Collection & Manuscripts & Printed Ephemera at the Winterthur Museum in
8
Delaware, writes at the museum’s blog: “Throughout, the
Brownies were on the cutting edge of trends, engaging
in sports like bicycle-riding and tennis, riding cars, and
visiting the Brooklyn Bridge and the 1893 Columbian
Exposition in Chicago even before the fair opened.”
Popular? Adventurous? Trend setting? What better
spokespeople could there be to try to convince every
family in the world to buy a camera? Of course, leveraging
the popularity of one brand to help promote another
was nothing new. In fact, the Brownies had lent their
hippy, spindly-legged likenesses to all sorts of products:
By the 1890s, the Brownies could not be confined to
the printed page and burst into the advertising and
merchandising worlds as companies sought to ride
the Brownie wave to increased sales. Small Brownie
paper dolls were placed in packages of Lion Coffee and
the New York Biscuit Co., prompting children to beg
parents to buy more to collect entire sets. A band of
Brownies playing musical instruments paraded across
trade cards for Estey Organ Co. Twelve characters were
fashioned into seven-inch cloth toys manufactured by
Arnold Print Works of Massachusetts, a very successful
dress goods printer. The Brownies transformed into
rubber stamps, card games, blocks, puzzles, and
even bowling pins. They even appeared on household
furnishings like carpets, wallpaper, fireplace sets, china,
glassware, flatware, and of course, Kodak cameras. The
Brownie empire reigned.
The first model, known as No. 1 Kodak Brownie—an
eight-ounce, palm-sized box camera with the capacity
for six exposures and four square pictures, without
reloading—retailed for $1 USD. The carrying case cost
an additional fifty cents. According to Kodak, 150,000
Brownies were shipped out in the first year alone, far
exceeding expectations.
TOY CAMERAS: MARKETING A MEDIUM
Attracting kids with the cute characters they recognized
from comics, and appealing to parents as a cheap and
easy-to-use camera that their child could play with,
Kodak capitalized on a cross-promotional marketing
scheme that only became more dynamic with every
new model. By 1933 Eastman Kodak forged marketing
alliances that resulted in the Boy Scout Brownie and the
Century of Progress Brownie, an official souvenir of that
year’s World’s Fair. Throughout the twentieth century,
as the popularity of photography skyrocketed, this
approach to marketing photography would only become
more sophisticated, making the medium big business.
How big a business? Between 1948 and 1953, Polaroid
sold 900,000 Model 95 Land Cameras, the first commercially available self-developing instant camera. While
Polaroid cameras were not toy cameras (though several
toy Polaroid cameras were manufactured over the years)
this impressive sales figure makes clear that cameras
were in demand, giving camera companies plenty of
incentive to promote their products in every imaginable
manner. It is no surprise, then, that camera makers and
companies that had nothing to do with photography
partnered to promote their respective products.
Photography started as a scientific art but the insistence on the part of Kodak, and the companies that have
followed it, that photography should be fun and easy
blurred the line between “serious” photography and
“recreational” photography. All because of the marketing
of a toy, that happened to be a camera.
In his essay “The Philosophy of Toys,” Charles Baudelaire
recounts a childhood trip to a mansion where a woman of
means, wanting to give him a memento of his visit, takes
him to a room where “the walls were invisible, so deeply
were they lined with toys. The ceiling had vanished behind
a great towering bouquet of toys, which hung down like
wonderful stalactites. The floor barely afforded a winding
path for one’s feet. Here was a world of toys of every kind,
from the costliest to the most trifling, from the simplest
to the most complicated.” If it were possible to install
every toy camera ever made in a single room, it would be
as colorfully jumbled as the room Baudelaire describes.
What are we to make of all these nontraditional cameras
that fill the pages of this book? They all are functioning
cameras in that they are capable of taking pictures.
Some were created to do nothing more than promote
a brand. Some were created for specific reasons but
became popular for unintended reasons. Some seem to
fall into both categories. And here they all are: cute and
cutting edge; clunky and junky; hokey and vintage. They
all share one thing in common, however—they are all
toy cameras.
Baudelaire places great importance on toys because they
instill the “facility for gratifying one’s imagination.” He
doesn’t understand the parents who do not permit their
child to play with a toy because it is too nice for the child,
and he laments the child who prefers to preserve her toys,
as if they are part of a museum collection, rather than
use them to have fun. Baudelaire insists, “toys become
actors in the great drama of life, scaled down inside the
camera obscura of the childish brain.” For the purpose of
Camera Crazy, this is an extremely fitting quotation. For
Baudelaire’s purpose, camera obscura refers to a child’s
mind as a dark chamber awaiting imagination to fill it
with the colors of life. But writing this piece in 1853, he
doubtless also had in mind the medium of photography
and its genesis in the ancient camera obscura, that
seemingly magical phenomenon of light passing through
a tiny aperture into a dark room and projecting onto the
wall an inverted image of an object outside the room.
9
TOY CAMERAS: MARKETING A MEDIUM
At its core, photography is the act of collecting images.
Why shouldn’t it be playful? For a long time, this was not
the case, however. But after the success of the Brownie,
all of that changed. When Baudelaire wrote, “The toy is
the child’s earliest initiation into art, or rather it is the first
concrete example of art,” no one thought of cameras as
playthings. Only trained professionals used them. But by
the twentieth century this was no longer the case and
different schools of photography emerged, most simply
divided between professional and hobbyist. There were
photographs worthy of hanging in museums and snapshots only suitable for family photo albums.
This split actually began near the end of the nineteenth
century when members of longstanding photographic
societies parted ways in an international wave of
“photo-secession,” forming new groups dedicated to
securing photography’s status as an art form as
important as painting. By this time, no matter how divisive
opinions regarding the medium, there was no shortage
of potential customers for the photography industry. The
industry just needed to understand the consumers they
were trying to reach.
But then something curious happened—everything
blurred and the clarity of distinction between professional
artists and everyday hobbyists dissolved, leaving a bokeh
of camera enthusiasts.
In 1973, when Walker Evans first started playing around
with his first Polaroid camera, he famously referred to
it as a toy. But it was the toy he favored for the rest of
his life, finding his subjects “all strangely enhanced by
the technical limitations of the camera.” After World
War II, photographers like Garry Winogrand and Lisette
Model came to the fore of the art world for their candid
street photography. More and more, aesthetic standards
10
were shaped by the authenticity of the unexpected. No
matter what side of the camera people were on, they
wanted to see, make, and take part in images that they
could relate to, cataloging, in the words of Evans, an
“inventory of American memory,” or the memory of the
human experience. It didn’t matter if the composition of
the shot was perfect, or if the lightning was right, or if the
colors on the print were a bit washed out. Life is all about
the unexpected and photography learned to embrace
this fact, and profit from it.
All of the cameras in this book were borne out of
promoting fun and imagination, very much in line with
why Baudelaire so valued toys. Yes, it is in the name of
selling product, but these cameras make users forget
that, even when they are holding something as garishly
branded as a beer can camera. Holga, Lomography,
SuperHeadz, and the smaller companies making equally
exciting toy cameras, prioritize a user experience that is
about fun and being in the moment, the opposite of the
time when photography was a slow, expensive process.
The cameras are quirky, sexy, silly, plain, and audacious,
reflecting their users and permitting them to be
comfortable with how the medium has changed so
dramatically, and making sure they realize how they are
active participants in this change.
It is easy, and fair, to be critical of how the proliferation of
photography has forever changed our relationship with
the image and how the image informs perspectives of
reality. This is what Susan Sontag called to attention in
the essays that comprise On Photography. Her concern
was how the ubiquitous photograph had become a
stand-in for reality: “Photos, rather than the world have
become the standard of the beautiful.” This, as Sontag
saw it, demeaned photographic subjects, treating
TOY CAMERAS: MARKETING A MEDIUM
them like nothing more than objects to be consumed.
To be sure, if you agree with what Sontag identified as
problematic about the popularity of photography, the
question deserves that much more scrutiny since the
advent of digital photography and the accelerated modes
of image delivery and sharing.
What Sontag decried, the companies and cameras
featured in Camera Crazy celebrate, though not in the
name of the mindless consumerism suggested by
Sontag’s “department store” world. These cameras are
the kinds of toys Baudelaire so admired, embodying
the whimsy of materialism and its inherent frivolity
that nonetheless yields stunning results. The results
might not hang on museum walls, sell for huge sums
in sterile galleries, or be included in surveys of art. But
then again, plenty of images made by toy cameras have
done such things. The “toy” in “toy camera” is a tool
for the imagination, whether in children or adults, selfidentified artists or proud amateurs, reminding us all
of the importance of not over thinking and not taking
everything too seriously. These cameras invite us to treat
the world like the toy-choked room that left an indelible
impression on the young Charles Baudelaire, where the
whole photographic process is a matter of playing, from
selecting the camera to choosing the shot and looking
at the image. We should all be so lucky to surrender, in
Baudelaire’s words, to “that admirable and luminous
alacrity which is typical of children, in whom desire,
deliberation and action are so to speak compacted
into a single faculty—and which sets them apart from
degenerate man, almost all of whose time is on the
contrary eaten up with deliberation.”
deliberation, preferring to indulge desire and ego.
In 1859, in the June issue of Atlantic Monthly, Oliver
Wendell Holmes, Sr. dubbed photography a “mirror
with a memory.” When I look in the mirror, I do not see
the same face that someone looking at me sees, or
the same one portrayed in a photograph. As Holmes
rightfully pointed out, photography documents the
fabrications of memory. All cameras encourage
people to capture the stories of their lives, not quite
as they happened, but how the user makes viewers
believe that is how they happened. Toy cameras
and the images they produce unapologetically call
attention to the schism between object and image,
letting us forget about mimetic principles and shutter
speeds to enjoy the simple act of creation, triggered
by an individual who wants to add something new to
the world.
The unwavering popularity of toy cameras is deliberate
to be sure. But that is in large part due to the cameras
being made and marketed for users who want to shirk
11
IT’S NOT THE PHOTOGRAPHER, IT’S THE CAMERA
IT’S NOT THE PHOTOGRAPHER, IT’S THE CAMERA:
A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE MODERN TOY CAMERA
CHRISTOPHER D. SALYERS
UNLIKELY BEGINNINGS
The history of the modern toy camera starts in the early
1960s, with a small company in Kowloon Bay, Hong Kong,
called the Great Wall Plastics Factory. It is here that they
created the Diana—a lightweight, extremely cheap (at
the time of production, less than $1 USD), plastic-bodied
120 film camera with a plastic lens. It had one shutter
speed, three aperture settings—sunny, sun with clouds,
cloudy—and manual focus from 1m to infinity. And cheap
it was: the shutter release caused a loud cracking noise,
and the film winding sounded forced and fragile as it
chattered with each turn. The Diana also suffered terrible
light leaks, and many resorted to covering the body in
multiple layers of gaffer tape.
It was imported to the US by the Power Sales Company
of Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, and wholesaled by the
case (144 cameras) at around fifty cents per unit—and
though this original Diana experienced success as an
inexpensive export, production at Great Wall ceased in
the mid-’70s. In part, their failure can be attributed to the
Chinese market, which was flooded with clones. These
copycats had a wide variety of altered features, including
electronic flashes, longer lenses, fake light meters, and
extra shutter speeds. They also each had their own take
on the “Diana” logo that encircled the lens: “Snappy,”
“NorthAmerican” (page 102), “Sam Toy,” “Mego Matic,”
“Candy,” and “Acme,” to name a few.
12
The Diana challenges the photographer to see
beyond the equipment and into the image…. [It]
summons up the Dadaist traditions of chance,
surprise, and a willingness to see what can happen.
—Robert Hirsch, Photographic Possibilities
The Diana had an artistic appeal all its own, and arrived
at a time when unconventional photography was being
recognized by galleries and institutions. When photographer Nancy Rexroth discovered the Diana in a graduate
class at Ohio University in 1969, it immediately struck a
chord. The images she was able to create with this cheap
plastic camera evoked a mysterious and dreamlike
exploration of her own childhood. With Rexroth’s Iowa in
1971, the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, DC, held the
first major exhibition of photography shot with a Diana.
Subsequently, Violet Press’s 1977 publication of Iowa was
the first monograph of images taken with a toy camera.
The Friends of Photography gallery in Carmel, California,
held a juried exhibition in 1979 titled The Diana Show,
where more than one hundred participants submitted
photographs shot with a Diana. The show’s catalogue
includes the first major essay on the toy camera,
“Pictures through a Plastic Lens,” in which The Friends
of Photography's Executive Associate David Featherstone wrote:
IT’S NOT THE PHOTOGRAPHER, IT’S THE CAMERA
In a medium so deeply rooted in the technology of its
making, it is not surprising that many photographers
reach a point of technical confinement which must
be overcome in order for their personal creative
growth to continue. The conflict is resolved in many
ways; explorations of alternative print-production
processes and major changes in subject concerns
are examples. The search for visual spontaneity
through use of a simple camera such as the Diana is
yet another.
Questions about what constitutes professional or artistic
photography were quite prevalent at the time, with Ansel
Adams famously quipping that the technical obsession
with the photographic process created a “sharp image with
a fuzzy concept.” The toy camera is a direct response to
this. The “confinement” perceived by Diana users at the
time carries over into the digital age, as the technical
aspects of each new and improved digital camera may
seem daunting to the aspiring photographer.
By the end of the ’70s, the Diana had become scarce—
even production of its clones was dwindling. Collectors
and enthusiasts scoured flea markets and thrift stores
hoping to stumble upon an original. Yet, unaware of the
toy camera movement growing in the United States, Hong
Kong entrepreneur T.M. Lee created what was to become
the Diana’s spiritual successor: the Holga.
In the late ’60s, Lee began his career at Yashica. Not long
after, he formed his own company, Universal Electronics
Industries, where he achieved initial success making
flashes for cameras. But as the ’70s market moved toward
built-in electronic flashes, he was forced to rethink his
business model. The first medium-format camera with a
built-in flash, the Holga was released in 1981. (The name
is an Anglicization of the Cantonese phrase ho gwong,
meaning “very bright.”) Like the Diana before it, the Holga
WHAT IS A TOY CAMERA?
A toy camera—typically—is a simple plastic
box camera with fixed focus, limited aperture
settings, and (in most cases) a single shutter
speed. Toy cameras have unique and sometimes
unpredictable characteristics that define them,
such as light leaks, vignetting, and soft focus.
Though the term is ever-changing and often
argued about in enthusiast circles, most of the
cameras in this book are toy cameras. Some may
not be inexpensive; some may have electronic
shutters; and some may be digital; but the
most important aspect of the toy camera is the
unexpected fun you can have with it.
was prone to malfunctions and produced results that
appeared impressionistic or surreal. At the time of its
inception, the Holga was made for 120 film, but just a few
years later 135 took over in popularity across China.
So it was in the United States that Lee found his niche
market, where sales soon reached 10,000 units per year
(today, that number is somewhere around 200,000).
First adopted as a low-tech instructional tool for
institutional workshops, the Holga is now internationally
recognized as a creative, unconventional camera for
photographers looking to stand out against a digital norm.
NOVELTY TOY CAMERAS
The Diana may have been the frontrunner of the toy
camera movement, but it wasn’t the first. Throughout the
’50s and early ’60s, a variety of “toys” were manufactured
as compact beginners’ cameras. (These included, but
were not limited to, the Ansco Panda, the Brownie Holiday,
13
IT’S NOT THE PHOTOGRAPHER, IT’S THE CAMERA
the Coronet 4-4 Mark II, the Fujipet, and the Imperial
Mark XII.) The retail model changed in 1963, when
Kodak released their Instamatic line of point-and-shoot
cameras alongside a new, easy-to-load, cartridge-based
film: the 126. Now that the backing plate and exposure
counter were built into the cartridge itself, this allowed
for simpler and cheaper cameras to be produced.
With budgets lowered, some truly bizarre novelty cameras
were released for 126 film. Disney has seen their characters branded onto many different toys, but in 1971, Child
Guidance Products of the Bronx, New York, released the
Mick-A-Matic (page 20). What made this unique wasn’t
the fact that it was a Mickey Mouse camera, but that the
camera was Mickey Mouse: a lens for a nose, a viewfinder
for a forehead, and (in early models) an ear that acted
as the shutter lever. (A label on the back of his right ear
reads: “Treat me gently, I’m your pal.”)
Similarly strange is Whitehouse Products’ Brooklynmade Charlie the Tuna 126 camera (page 22), released
in 1971. In exchange for three StarKist can labels and
$4.95 USD, you could own your very own oversized
(241 mm tall) tuna-shaped camera, complete with his
signature thick-rimmed glasses and red cap. As the
original ad stated: “Just give ’em the old fish eye—they’ll
never know it’s a camera.”
In 1972 Kodak released a more compact version
(13×17mm vs. 28×28mm image size) of its 126 film: the
110. This format was extremely popular at launch and led
to the production of a wide variety of novelty cameras
over the next two decades. Cameras were released
disguised as cigarette packs, cans of soda or beer (pages
64–67), a car tire (page 68), a miniature airplane (page
70), Webster’s Dictionary (page 84), a He-Man toy (page
36), and even a bag of French fries (page 60).
The production of toy cameras saw a decline in the late
’80s and ’90s, largely due to the popularity of inexpensive
single-use 135 disposable cameras. Though iterations
of disposables have existed since 1949, the first truly
successful disposable was Fujifilm’s Utsurun-Desu
(translation: “It takes pictures”) released in 1986. Kodak
released its version, the Fling ($9.95 USD), in 1987, which
was later rebranded the FunSaver in 1989. Versions of
cheap disposable cameras found their way into just
about every retail outlet, catering to the growing need
for immediate, simple, and inexpensive photography at
a time before cell phone technology placed a camera in
everyone’s pocket. Still, the nostalgia factor for these
cameras is growing, and—like in notions of lost art or
The Mick-a-Matic camera.
14
IT’S NOT THE PHOTOGRAPHER, IT’S THE CAMERA
The Majestic and the Brownie Holiday served as inspirations for modern day toy cameras. Compare these images with the Sprocket Rocket
(page 153) and Golden Half (page 204).
shared experiences, where cameras are left for strangers
to use—many artists are finding new ways to experiment
with single-use cameras.
games or edited in-screen—features now common on
just about every modern handheld device.
Though toy cameras were still being produced (for
mostly 135 film) with interesting designs and quirky,
in-camera effects, they were mainly marketed toward
children. Throughout the ’80s, ’90s, and early 2000s,
there were brand tie-ins such as Barbie (page 58), Star
Wars (page 50), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (page
44), Hello Kitty (page 56), and Pokémon (page 52). Then
there were oddities like the Nickelodeon Photo Blaster,
which captured four images per frame yet had, quite
possibly, the ugliest camera design ever produced. In 1998
Nintendo released the Game Boy Camera (page 226),
which at the time was the world’s smallest digital camera
(Guinness Book of World Records, 1999). Though crude
in result (256×244 pixels [0.014MP], black-and-white,
thermal-paper printing), the camera was innovative in
concept, with a rotating lens allowing for front-facing
“selfies” that could then be used interactively on built-in
Like in many art scenes, the toy camera had its own
movement: Lomography. The Lomography Society was
founded by a group of Viennese students in 1992, after
they became enamored with the image quality captured
by the 1984 Russian-made compact point-and-shoot
camera, the Lomo LC-A. Far from a cheap plastic camera,
the LC-A was made of metal with a quality Minitar 32mm
lens. Many international photography exhibitions later,
Lomography has become synonymous with toy cameras,
opening showrooms worldwide and releasing their
own variants on the plastic toy camera (Supersampler,
Fisheye, La Sardina) and re-creations of classics (including
the Diana and Holga) every year.
TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY TOYS
With the advent of the new millennium, the concept of the
toy camera shifted into the digital realm, thanks in large
part to novelty cameras (many Japanese-produced) and
15
IT’S NOT THE PHOTOGRAPHER, IT’S THE CAMERA
phone apps (like Hipstamatic) that re-create the effects
of many popular plastic-bodied box cameras. Instagram,
a Facebook-owned camera app with social media functionality, has the ability to take normal, low-resolution
photographs and tweak them using various filters to
give photos a retro, hazy, analog-like appeal. You might
Instagram the cover of this book, for example, quickly
choose a filter you like, and not think much on it before
sharing the image with your friends. But what you’ve
really done is digitally mimic the results of a vintage
camera. The Lomo LC-A, Yashica Mat, Diana, Holga, and
Polaroid are all inspirations for these filters.
The Japanese company SuperHeadz (and its parent
company, Powershovel) creates cameras that fully
embody the modern spirit of the toy camera—inventive,
unique, and fashionable. Its Harinezumi (page 191) digital
camera, with the appearance of a tiny roll of 110 film,
shoots video and stills that have the quality of an aged roll
of 8mm. It’s Wide and Slim line (a reimagining of the cult
classic Vivitar Ultra Wide and Slim, page 206) is popular
for its 22mm focal length and results that are unnaturally
vivid, with oversaturation and high contrast. The SuperHeadz Golden Half looks like a modern, compact take on
the Kodak Brownie Holiday camera—except it takes two
shots per frame. Like other multiframe cameras, there’s
a playful interaction with the subject(s) as you consider
not only the image in the frame, but the next shot, and
how the two will relate side by side. The Blackbird Fly
(page 196), one of their more recognizable cameras, is
an all-plastic modern twin-lens reflex in a variety of bold
colors that is sold in a faux plastic birdcage.
Camera crazy: the ever-growing pile of plastic.
16
IT’S NOT THE PHOTOGRAPHER, IT’S THE CAMERA
Another Japanese maker, Fuuvi, takes a more whimsical
approach to their products, with even more digital offerings: a biscuit-shaped camera (pages 214–15), cameras
that look like glasses, and more. Each is made to look like
a novelty accessory and produces images that mimic
analog-like effects.
With photography’s much publicized—and once scorned,
then ultimately embraced—move into digital, the way
we see and interact with the medium has changed. No
longer is photography an art exclusive to tech junkies. From
Lomography to iPhoneography, it’s clear that the age of
the point and shoot as mainstream art is upon us—either
that, or we’re still all rebelling against the barrage of
high-definition media.
The toy film camera, in the simplicity of its form and
the charm of its weaknesses, creates images that are
unexpectedly personal. They act as a third-eye vantage
point on life’s chosen moments, seeing things as the
photographer cannot. Toy cameras are, perhaps, the
simplest ways to keep the spirit of film photography
alive. Beyond the rhetoric and rules, they lend a romantic
interpretation of the world, a mysterious way in which
they make marks with light. They’re quirky, inventive,
and unconventional. They allow us to look at the art of
photography with all the vibrancy and excitement of
youth—for they are, after all, toys.
It is the person behind the camera, rather than the
machine itself, who created the image. This at least is
one of the paradigms of creative photography.
—David Featherstone, “Pictures Through a Plastic
Lens”
Many of us tend to think of the camera, not the photographer, when we view certain images, and this is a significant change in how we interpret the medium. Thanks in
large part to the Internet, more people than ever perceive
the camera as a specific filter to certain aspects of their
lives. You might take a Diana to your friend’s wedding,
bring a Fisheye to the beach, color tint your online profile
picture, or take your Holga on a sightseeing trip around
town—each with a particular look or style in mind. We’re
constantly battered by imagery, and the more we interact
with them via apps, social media, or simple online image
sharing, the more we understand how they’re made and
which camera/filter/lens they came from. Whether or
not you can tell the difference between a digital filter and
an analog original, well, that’s a whole other matter.
17
NOVELTY
CAMERAS
NOVELTY CAMERAS
MICK-A-MATIC
Manufactured in USA for Child Guidance Products Inc. Year: 1971. Film: 126. Flash: flash cubes.
In the earliest model of this
camera, one had to pull up on
the right ear to release the shutter, which would have made for
awkward handling. This was
quickly fixed for the model you
see here, with a standard side
shutter switch. A sticker on the
back reads: “Treat me gently,
I’m your pal.”
20
NOVELTY CAMERAS
Sylvie frames her shot with the Mick-a-Matic.
21
UNVERKÄUFLICHE LESEPROBE
Christopher Salyers, Buzz Poole
Camera Crazy
Gebundenes Buch, Pappband, 240 Seiten, 21,0 x 21,0 cm
220 farbige Abbildungen
ISBN: 978-3-7913-4955-8
Prestel
Erscheinungstermin: August 2014